


valley of the dolls

by hysteries



Series: beginning middle end (dimension 20 alphabet 2021) [3]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Campaign 01 Season 01: Fantasy High Freshman Year (Dimension 20), Character Study, Codependency, F/F, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29688222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hysteries/pseuds/hysteries
Summary: Penelope Everpetal on being prom queen, loving Sam Nightingale, and how it feels to starve.
Relationships: Penelope Everpetal/Sam Nightingale
Series: beginning middle end (dimension 20 alphabet 2021) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179170
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Dimension 20 Alphabet 2021





	valley of the dolls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dimension 20 Alphabet 2021 collection. My prompt today was **crown** and the title was taken from _Valley of the Dolls_ by Marina + The Diamonds.
> 
> Penelope Everpetal is probably my favourite antagonist in Fantasy High (maybe tied with Kalina). I wish we'd gotten to know more about her! All Brennan gave us was her desire to be eternal prom queen, and so I wanted to play around with that idea. It's a cliche, but I think Penelope was smart enough to recognize that she was a cliche — and probably hated it. I also love the glimpses into her and Sam Nightingale's relationship. How did Penelope wind up trapping the only person she loves into a crystal? It's so much more complicated than just wanting to be the most popular girl in school!!!
> 
>  **TW** for parental neglect, codependent/unhealthy relationships, gendered insult.

Her mom was the prom queen, you know. Pretty in pastel purple, lavender sparkling from her tulle skirt. She’s onstage in the only picture that Penelope has of her, waving an arm to an audience who’s just out of sight. The crown’s fitted snugly over her updo. It shines with a bright light, the crystals on it so blinding that Penelope used to think the picture was enchanted.

She was a pretty stupid kid back then, but she doesn’t blame herself for that. All kids are idiots.

It’s like, pretty fucking cliché, but Penelope loves that picture. Sleeps with it on her bedside. Teen girl, long-gone mom, dad who’s always on a business trip in Fallinel but definitely _coming home soon, sweetheart_. The picture is the only promise that life could’ve been different for her. That maybe, if her mom loved her a little better, she wouldn’t have forgotten all about Penelope.

Wait, scratch that.

Penelope isn’t forgettable. She’s unforgettable, actually, but only because she painstakingly made herself so. It’s not an easy thing, being the most popular girl in school. It takes a lot of hard work and time to be effortlessly cool. Nobody really gets that.

No one except Sam, obviously.

Sam gets everything. It’s kind of crazy. Penelope doesn’t even remember meeting her. She’s just always been there. It’s like one day, Sam just popped out of the sky or Bastion City or whatever and glued herself to Penelope’s side — or maybe Penelope glued herself to Sam.

"It's like you were like, made in a lab to my best friend," she'd pointed out once.

"Uh, no. It's like _you_ were engineered in a lab to be _my_ best friend," Sam had shot back. 

Point is, Sam understands better than anybody else why Penelope needs the crown. They go through it all together. Trading dolls at recess, shopping for lip gloss at the mall, giggling behind their hands when Skrank’s baggy pants fall down to his ankles in homeroom. Sam’s there when Penelope cries, when she gets so mad at her dad that she manifests a full-on fire elemental in the middle of the house, when her mom forgets to call on her birthday (every fucking year). Penelope’s there when Sam has auditions that she never gets, when Sam’s mom works through the night, when Sam accidentally causes a thunderstorm in the middle of a pep rally. They’re a unit.

Penelope doesn’t even have to say that she wants to be queen bee. Sam just steps into line behind her, letting Penelope take the spot at the top of the pyramid. When Dayne Blade asks for Sam’s number, she passes him Pen’s instead. She’s the only person Penelope’s ever been able to count on.

Except – there are some things that she can’t even tell Sam, because Penelope knows they’re wrong.

She feels the wrong type of hunger. Not the delicate, dainty kind that a girl like her is supposed to hide behind a sweet smile and a salad at lunch. She’s hungry for everything. She could eat the whole world, a star, a supernova, and still be starving.

Most of all, she’s hungry for eyes.

Ew, not like that. She’s not some weirdo fucking cannibal.

But that feeling, when she’s doing her last cartwheel of a routine, and the entire audience erupts into the cheers? That feeling that comes when she feels everyone looking at her? Yeah. She’s hungry for that. Like the picture of her mom, radiant and grinning in a crown, standing at the center of a room full of kids. Basking in their applause.

Attention-whore is such a reductive and gendered insult. She’s attention-starved, thank you very much.

And so what if her dad can barely stand to be in the same country as her? That’s what she has Sam for. Sam knows better to look away from Penelope, even for a second.

Until she doesn’t.

It’s that fucking Johnny Spells creep. Suddenly, Sam can’t stop talking about him. And then she’s the one dating a college guy, while Penelope’s stuck with Dayne-thinks-she’s-an-idiot Blade, when really, it should be the opposite. Pen’s supposed to be the leader here. It’s not even like they can double date, because the idea of Spells and Dayne within five feet of each other makes Penelope want to tear out her ear drums and launch them out of the city.

Sam looks at _him_ , now, and that’s fucked up.

There have always been two givens in Penelope Everpetal’s life. One is that she’s going to be prom queen; the other is that Sam Nightingale is her best friend.

When those two givens turn into _maybe-nots_ , can you really blame a girl for turning to black magic and an evil dragon? Especially once he promises her a crown, forever and ever?

Right before she helps Aelwyn Abernant trap her best friend in a palimpsest, Penelope does her makeup, not a smidge out of place. It's lonely, without Sam, and way too quiet. On her way out, she stops to look at the picture of her mother. She wonders if she had a best friend cheering her on from the sidelines, just out of frame.

“I’m doing this for you,” she whispers, tracing a thumb lightly over the image. “You’ll see."

 _And Sam_? She imagines her mother asking, not breaking her smile for a second. 

"Sam's going to understand. She always does.”

Except she doesn’t get a chance to find that out, because of course a band of losers has to come in and steal her spotlight. They ruin everything, and they're too small-brained to get it. Dayne goes down in like, a second, and so Penelope has to do everything by herself. As usual. It's a sick cosmic joke, really. Made even sicker by the fact that one of them actually pushes her off the stage. Her stage. 

As she’s bleeding out on the floor of the gym, pink skirt fanning out around her, Penelope hopes that Sam remembers to bury her in a crown.


End file.
